A famous convict Jacques Collin, alias Trompe la mort, or abbot Carlos Herrera, also called Vautrin, escapes from prison. Chance makes him meet Lucien de Rubempré, an impetuous and eternal lover who, when he is dismissed, collapses. Moved by this fragility, he takes him under his wing, and will do...
A struggling artist buys a talisman that gives him love, fame and wealth. The talisman is a severed left hand, and it works perfectly, in fact, magically. But of course there is nothing free in this world, and after one year the devil comes and asks for his due.
A young man comes back to his hometown to be confronted with a bourgeois obnoxious family who has always despised his -now dead - parents because they were music hall artists, "entertainers". But because he's the sole legatee of an uncle's fortune, his relatives become friendly with him.. at least...
In South America anything can happen: the consul might give you as a snack to the sharks, you can wind up as a working man (slave) in a banana plantation or as a recruit in the governor's navy. And there's always a fire squad waiting for you so you 'd better start a revolution! It takes all...
Guy Carbonnel, a rich industrialist, has more eyes for rugby than for his wife Hélène. René Rivals, his long-time pal, takes advantage of it to court her but Guy is becoming suspicious so René has to find a way to deflect his friend's suspicion. He finally has an idea: he asks Lilian, a circus...
An inventor has just developed an extraordinary machine, a disintegrating ray and thought detector. He experiences it one evening on a group of relatives, including his fiancée, and it seems to turn into a tragedy: he is found lifeless, apparently poisoned. A man calling himself a police officer...
A ruined banker is abandoned by his mistress. He commits suicide after entrusting a prostitute with twenty-thousand francs. The money changes hands. A crook is arrested in the house of an an actress he had fooled. In a luxury hotel, a typist kills her lover's wife. The trial of the murderer is...
Four young friends share the carefree, cheerfulness, laughter and dances of Bohemian life. Rodolphe the painter, Alexandre Chaunard the composer, Colline the philosopher, as well as Marcel and his friend Musette. Mimi, a romantic young girl, falls in love with Rodolphe.
"Les Trois Valses" traces the love story of two people over three eras. In the first waltz (music based on Johann Strauss I), Yvonne is a sensitive Parisian ballet dancer, whose romance with a dashing officer is brought to an abrupt end by his family. She goes off to Vienna to become a big star. In...
René, a bank employee, is suspected of theft and fired from his job. It borders on the worst by following in the footsteps of a misfit, Alexandre. A series of circumstances lead him to save little Gérard, the bank manager's grandson, from a fire. The child becomes attached to René, who manages...
Lucien Mazerand, a bookseller from Châteauroux, goes to Paris to spend a few days in the French capital. At the music-hall, he discovers Stella Losange, a singer who literally enthralls him. Determined to seduce her, he is aware that a mere bookseller from the provinces stands no chance. So he...
A rich businessman living alone is deprived of the nephew he was to have brought up decides on his doctor's advice to search for the four illegitimate children he once fathered, which leads him to accept responsibility for his actions.
For 15 years after Waterloo, a baron refuses to accept the defeat. He reluctantly marries one of 2 Bourbon sisters but lands up dueling with the wife's former lover. Finally he gets a chance to prove himself again in battle.
Bastien and Furet are a journalist and a photographer working together as a team on the newspaper 'L'Echo du Jour'. Just as they are about to go off on a weekend break with Micky, their boss's secretary, they are sent to a crime scene to report the murder of a Russian named 'le Moujik'.
Dupuy, the first officer of the Cristobal, a French merchant ship, is informed by cabaret dancer La Rubia that the Cristobal carries a priceless secret cargo of gold. Based on the novel by Albert t'Serstevens.
Cora Pearl, a demi-mondaine under the Second Empire, falls in love with a legitimist while she is the mistress of Jérôme Bonaparte, the cousin of Napoleon III.
